Queers for Economic Justice is writing this message in sorrow to tell our friends and supporters that on Friday, November 9th, 2012, William Brandon Lacy Campos, QEJ’s former Co-Executive Director, died unexpectedly. He was only 35. There are few other details available at this moment. We are sending our love and condolences to his family, his partner Nico, to David and Mimzy, and to his friends and closest comrades-in-arms.

All of us at QEJ are shocked and grief-stricken at his passing. Brandon was a luminous but wounded gift to our community. His death is a tragic and a terrible thing. We know that we have has lost another person we could not afford to lose. And as a part of a great family of fighters, QEJ can see that there is a terrible crisis occurring in our community, one which causes us to suffer the deaths of so many precious people who could not survive the terrible price of oppression and the overwhelming toll it exacts. It is deeply evident in Brandon’s unexpected death, reminding us of the scars and vulnerabilities of so many whom we love.

We do not yet understand how to save these complicated lives. QEJ believes that we must start to have a different conversation, not with rhetoric or in blame, but because we are each other’s best hope for survival. We are heartbroken at saying farewell to you, Brandon: Sweet friend, brave fighter, beautiful queer spirit, QEJ family. You will not be forgotten.